When facts are inconvenient, when international law, human rights and history get in the way, when war crimes can't easily be justified or explained away, when logic doesn't help much, the current crop of American political leaders turns to what is now the old reliable: 9/11. We have to fight in Afghanistan because ... somehow ... it's tied into what happened on September 11, 2001. Here's Vice-President Joe Biden: "We know that it was from the space that joins Afghanistan and Pakistan that the attacks of 9/11 occurred." 1

Here's Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC): "This is the place [Afghanistan] we were attacked from 9/11." 2

Rep. Mike Pence, the third-ranking House Republican, asserted that the revelations in the Wikileaks documents do not change his view of the Afghan conflict, nor does he expect a shift in public opinion. "Back home in Indiana, people still remember where the attacks on 9/11 came from." 3

Amnesty International is calling for people to lobby Congress to allow US trials for the 9/11 accused go forward; currently Sen. Lindsey Graham is spearheading attempts to block US trials in favor of military commissions - loose nuke

President Obama made the right decision to try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other alleged 9/11 conspirators in U.S. federal court, but now members of Congress are attacking the President's decision and threatening to block funding for the trial. Senator Lindsey Graham called federal trials a "dumb idea" and wants to use the kangaroo courts known as military commissions, that he and other politicians cooked up at Guantanamo, to ensure convictions and cover up evidence of torture.

Below is some of what a representative in Senator Graham's DC office told me on October 1st in response to my further inquiry into the Senator's acknowledgment and response to the information we gave him and he willingly accepted to take a look at. http://www.911blogger.com/node/20578

At first contact, his office refused to say he had looked at the information. Now they have admitted he has reviewed the information but is still sticking with the 9/11 Commission Report, scientific evidence to the contrary be damned and his oath not withstanding.

Now, Senator Graham is adding an amendment to the appropriations bill that reads in part: "None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available for the Department of Justice by this Act may be obligated or expended to commence or continue the prosecution in (a civilian) court of the United States of an individual suspected of planning, authorizing, organizing, committing or aiding the attacks on the United States and its citizens that occurred on September 11, 2001."

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., is trying to prevent the Obama administration from holding criminal trials in civilian courts for the alleged Sept. 11 plotters instead of bringing them before military commissions.

Graham, who helped craft the 2006 law that established the military commissions, said Friday that he'd attached an amendment to an appropriations bill that would prohibit the Obama administration from spending money on the prosecution and trial of the accused terrorists before U.S. civilian federal judges.

"Khalid Sheik Mohammed needs to be tried in a military tribunal," Graham said. "He's not a common criminal. He took up arms against the United States."

Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, is being held at the U.S. military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, along with four other alleged plotters of the jetliner strikes that killed nearly 3,000 Americans.